Jessica Sanders
Director, Producer, Writer
Jessica Sanders is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker, a director, producer and writer who works in both documentary and dramatic films. Sanders directed, produced and wrote After Innocence, which won top awards at the Sundance Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival, Boston Independent Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival, and Full Frame Documentary Festival. The film was released theatrically by New Yorker Films before being broadcast on Showtime. After Innocence was shortlisted for the 78th Academy Awards.

Sanders produced the film SING!, which was nominated in 2002 for an Oscar for Best Short Documentary. Her previous film, Los Angels, a narrative short film that she wrote, produced, and directed played at numerous festivals and received top awards at the Chicago International and New Orleans Film Festivals. Sanders filmed Al Gore in Nashville for The Climate Project, a work in progress documentary for Producer Lawrence Bender and Paramount Vantage. Sanders directed George & Brad In Bed, a short documentary profiling the relationship between actor George Takei (Star Trek's Captain Sulu) and his husband Brad Altman. Sanders also directed Keepers of The Night, a follow up to her Oscar Nominated film Sing! featuring the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus in a new opera, which won Best Short Documentary film at the 2009 International Children’s Film Festival.

Sanders recently directed The March, a feature documentary produced by Brazil’s Conspiração Films following Holocaust survivors and teens from around the world as they journey to Poland to retrace the infamous “March of Death” that thousands of Jews walked to their death during the Holocaust. Sanders is currently in production on a short film for the US Army called The Culture Project, about the Army’s shift in training soldiers in culture awareness.

Sanders and her work have been profiled on The Sundance Channel, MTV, MSNBC, CNN, Larry King Live, Dateline, Fox News, Court TV and NPR. She has been profiled in The New York Times, LA Weekly, Giant Robot Magazine, and Film Festival Magazine. She has lectured at various universities and conferences, including the National Innocence Network Conference, Tribeca Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.

Jessica Sanders website: www.JessicaSandersFilm.com

Marc Simon
Producer, Writer
Marc H. Simon conceived the idea for, wrote and produced After Innocence, which won the special jury award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, before going on to receive other numerous recognitions, including its selection as a semi-finalist for Best Feature Documentary at the 78th Academy Awards. Simon also directed, produced and wrote Nursery University (www.nurseryuniversitythemovie.com). Simon is also an entertainment attorney at the law firm of Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP in New York City where his practice focuses in the area of film production and finance. Simon has also worked as a special legal correspondent and producer for Fox Television's A Current Affair.

Charles Bernstein
Composer
Charles Bernstein has written numerous scores for feature films and television specials, including for the Oscar winning films Czechoslovakia 1968 and Maya Lin.  He is a Governor representing the Composers Branch on the Academy of Motion Picture Board of Governors.

Brian Johnson
Editor
Brian Johnson is an accomplished editor who was nominated for an ACE Award for Best Editing in a Documentary for the 1999 Academy Award-nominated feature Buena Vista Social Club.

Cinematographers

Shana Hagan
Hagan has photographed over 40 documentary and narrative films, including the Oscar winning Breathing Lessons about poet and journalist Mark O Brian. 

Buddy Squires
Squires has photographed six Academy Award nominated films, one Oscar winning film and 9 Emmy Award winning films.  His cinematography is featured in nearly all of Ken Burns' films.

Bestor Cram
Cram is an award winning director, producer and cinematographer. 

Bob Richmond
Richmond photographed the Academy Award nominated My Architect and the award winning Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, among dozens of feature documentaries.

Production Company
American Film Foundation
Based out of Santa Monica, California, American Film Foundation is an Academy® and Emmy® award-winning film production company that produces theatrical documentary features, series and specials on the arts, social and human rights issues, the environment and humanities.